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Manuals for MTI MQDX2 Qbus MFM/Floppy controller?

L

Lou - N2MIY

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Folks,

I have an MTI MQDX2 disk / floppy controller, but cannot find anything on the internet about it. It's a dual height Qbus card made in 1988 (this one anyway), that is an MSCP controller for two ST506-style MFM drives and two floppy drives. It has a nice interactive bootstrap selection menu that comes up on the pdp-11 console terminal with bootstraps for most practical devices, including DU: to boot itself. It is a pretty sophisticated controller and I have only figured out a small amount. It has a local on-board serial console port for configuration, which I have connected a terminal to and have looked closely through configuration menus. I have also figured out which connector is for the floppies and which for the hard drives, which pin is pin 1, and the like.

I am stuck at the moment trying to figure out how to change the drive configurations in the setup menus. I can view all four drive configurations (two hard, two floppy) but can't figure out how to make any changes.

Does anyone here have the manual, or remember the tricks to make changes in the configuration menus? Any help is appreciated!

Thanks,
Lou
 
Figured it out without the manual!

Figured it out without the manual!

There is a password required to change the configuration parameters. The main menu looks like this: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=404&attachmentid=44574. When it first comes up, PASSWORD is highlighted. Press <cr>.

Then the PASSWORD menu comes up: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=404&attachmentid=44573 . However where the HELLO is showing on this screen, it will say BYE. If you move the highlight to BYE, then type the password, which is MTI (case sensitive), followed by <cr>. The BYE will change to HELLO and you are in. Then the settings can be changed and saved.

I messed around for a while and figured this out by chance eventually. I got lucky I guess.

I am currently formatting an RD32, however the parameters can be set for ANY geometry MFM disk. Of course, RQDX3 can also format any geometry MFM disk, but you have to use my procedure for patching ZRQCH0 ....

Lou (singlehandedly driving up the future ebay value of all MTI MQDX2 cards ...)
 
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